Wednesday 20 February 2013

Shouldn't there be just ONE international adoption search database?

As I spend loads of time on Facebook and various other social media sites, I occasionally see people looking for their birth parents, or children they've given up for adoption, for one reason or another.

Those posts always make me think that there should be a website with one huge database, covering all such searches internationally. Just out of curiosity, I googled to see if such website exists.

It seems that there are loads of websites for this purpose! Some cover a certain country, some are international, some are mainly portals with links to other adoption search sites, as well as information on how to go about such search, and whether it's a good idea or not, etc..

Adding to that the individual sites and social media profiles covering just one case, I think that there are way too many sites sharing that cake. They are simply making it even more difficult for children and birth parents to find each other!

Imagine if there was just ONE huge international database for this purpose..

(Regional websites could exist, with different language versions, but using the one central database.)

Everyone who's looking for a child or a parent, would fill in their info;

If you were adopted..
Name (and birth name, if you know it)
Date of birth
Place of birth
Looking for birth parent(s) / siblings / close relatives / all
Optional other info about yourself / your reasons for the search..

If your child/ren was/were adopted..
Your name
Name/s you gave to them, if any
Date/s of giving birth to them
Place of giving birth to them
Optional other info about yourself / your reasons for the search..

...and various security measures to try and filter out headcases who might like creating fake profiles, etc. (trust me, there are always people like that, unfortunately..). Also, some smart way of getting in touch through the website, rather than people posting their contact info in public.

It would be so handy to just go to this ONE place, and search by country / age / etc..

If the other party was looking for you as well, you'd find each other in no time. If not, at least you'd have left your info - maybe they will look for you someday, or maybe they are no longer alive, but some other family member might find you and  tell you about them..

I realise that such database will probably never exist, for many reasons.. The existing sites don't want to let go of their business, there would probably be some legal issues as to what personal information can or can't be stored, and where to store it, etc, etc, etc..

But if people really wanted to find each other, I think that would be the obvious way to make it as easy as possible, no matter where you are.

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